Best Song: Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove
Interesting fact, the rave One Nation was named after this record. That wasn't the reason I picked this though, it's a great funky number which was the only Top 40 hit for Funkadelic. As a side note you could probably say if I was a youth in 1978 then this may have been the sort of music I'd be into in the same way I was into rave in the 90s.
Worst Song: Barbra Streisand And Neil Diamond - You Don't Bring Me Flowers
One may expect this song to be from a musical or film given it's Barbra Streisand, but it wasn't. It was intended to be a theme song for a TV show, but ended up not being. Then there were plans for a movie based on this song, but that was scrapped too. What we are saying then is that the crap Barbra Streisand has done for musicals and films were deemed good enough, but this wasn't. That's how bad it is.
Top 40 Review
There were 2 Christmas records in this Top 40. They are the Christmas number one "Mary's Boy Child" by Boney M, "Please Come Home For Christmas" by The Eagles and "Christmas In Smurfland" by Father Abraham And The Smurfs. As usual its zero points for all of them.
The Barron Knights were in there with the novelty hit "A Taste Of Aggro" which I concede is funny, but not worthy of any marks. We also had Paul Evans with his 2nd Top 40 hit with the very odd "Hello This Is Joannie" which came 19 years after his first. I don't mind that record.
Disco was the dominant genre in the charts which was both a good and a bad thing. The highest placed disco record was the terrible "YMCA" by The Village People. There was also the likes of Rod Stewart jumping on the disco bandwagon with "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?".
At the same time though we had decent disco records such as "I'm Every Woman" by Chaka Khan and "Le Freak" by Chic.
We were in the era of punk and new wave which included decent records from The Clash, The Buzzcocks and Blondie. There was also the not so good "Rat Trap" by The Boomtown Rats.
Soul music delivers as usual with the excellent cover of Billy Joel's "Just The Way You Are" by Barry White. The Bee Gees were also doing soul music with "Too Much Heaven". Then we have "I'll Put You Together Again" by Hot Chocolate which is another one of their forgotten gems.
Billy Joel is in the Top 40 himself with "My Life" which is a decent record. We also have "Song For Guy" by Elton John which Elton John wrote entirely by himself because it's largely an instrumental and is probably the best thing he's ever done.
It was the year of "Grease" and John Travolta is in the charts with "Greased Lightnin'" and gets no points. Olivia Newton John on the other hand has moved on from "Grease" with the record "A Little More Love" which actually isn't bad.
The ever reliable ELO are in the Top 40 with the ELO EP on which all tracks are decent.
Overall it's a pretty decent chart.
Score: 17.5
Table
It's another Christmas chart that's better than the best year chart and we're really into the decent scores from best year territory now:
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